


Bicycle Races

by akire_yta



Series: the drawer sessions [2]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Platonic Affection, ace character experimenting, ace issues, and lots of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 16:15:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12685476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: ace!john testing his aceness by being the campus bike





	Bicycle Races

It took John years to fully grasp how differently everyone else saw the world.

Shifting away from home, surrounded by people not related to him for the first time, John caught the edges of different worlds.  He peered in like an observer, listening as they extolled the virtues of someone else’s face, form, features.  Heard tell of not-so-secret rendezvouses and long-running emotional sagas.

They all lived on top of each other, that first year.  Sooner or later everyone walked in on someone else fucking, rutting, making sweet love.  Partners shifted in a dance where John couldn’t even hear the music.

He still had offers.  It just took him too long before he even recognized what they were offering.

“So, you’re like, queer?”  Alice was objectively pretty, with her shaved undercut and brightly coloured long, tufted fringe.  She had a ring in her nose that John always wanted to reach out and touch, though years of strict training kept his hands to himself.

John shrugged, unable to meet her eye square on.  “I don’t think so.  Maybe?  I just never…” he sighed and laid back on the grass.  It was easier to look at the sky through the dappled shade of leaves.  “Never met anyone who made me feel anything like what you’re describing.”

Alice slithered down to lie on her side, facing him.  “Having your heart beat out of your chest is not a prerequisite for a quick tumble, y’know?”

John glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, caught the edge of her wicked-quick smile.  “I don’t feel anything,” he confessed.  He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was something about him that was broken.  This inability to feel, except for the times when he felt too much to bear, seemed to be his problem alone.  “Like, I look at you, and I can think that you’re pretty, and smart, and clever, and just a really cool person….”

“Why thank you!” Alice giggled, gently patting his arm.

“But if I can think that, why can’t I feel anything to go along with it?”  He didn’t mean to sound so plaintive, but now that he was saying the words, they were all piling up and tumbling out of him. “Surely I should feel something?”

Alice half sat up, resting on her elbow to look down at him.  “I can’t answer that,” she said.  “I mean, I really like you too, John.  And if there’s something there, I’d be down with that.  But if there isn’t…well, I already have a pretty cool friend.”

John bit his lip and looked up at her.  “Can I… I want to try something, but you can say no.”

“What do you want to try?”  Again, that sparkle in her eyes, that fearless curiousity he had long-admired.

“Can I kiss you?”

Alice blinked, her grin faltering for a second before returning in full force.  “Didn’t you get your fooling around out of the way in high school like everyone else?” she asked even as she shifted, her weight on her palms as she pushed up into sitting.

John winced, turning away from her as he sat up.  “Not really,” he muttered, not wanting to remember that time again.

College was meant to be better.

“Hey.” Her nails were painted blue, he noticed, as she reached out and grabbed his shoulder.  Her middle finger had a chip out of the colour, curved like her grin.  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.  I was just surprised.”  She hesitated, waiting to see if he would stay or go.

John stayed, and forced himself to look at her.  “I didn’t…high school wasn’t good for me,” he admitted.

“High school sucks for kids like us,” she said flatly.  John blinked at the idea of an us.  “But,” she continued briskly.  “That doesn’t mean all is lost.”  She smiled at him, warm and personal, her eyes searching his.  Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find.  “Pucker up, Tracy,” she said with enough sass to make him laugh.

It was…not unpleasant.  He was acutely aware of lips and teeth and tongue in a way he normally wasn’t.  Also saliva.

But Alice smelled of flowers, and her bare arms were warm and real and alive under his hands.  She pulled away slowly, and this close he could count her dark lashes where they rested on her cheek. When she opened her eyes, slow as a yawn, he could see her irises contract, and he caught himself staring.  

“How was that?” she asked as John shook his head and looked away, unsure what to say. She laughed and shoved at his shoulder.  “Ow my ego!”

He laughed with her, feeling more unsure than when they started.  “Um, thanks?”

She settled back on her heels, looking him square in the eye in a way that made his toes curl for all the wrong reasons.  “John, take my unsolicited advice.  Fool around.  Kiss anyone who says yes.  Jump into bed on a whim.  Experiment.”  She dropped to the side to lie on the grass, looking up at him.  “Even if you don’t find what works for you, you at least know for sure what doesn’t.”  She looked up at him.  “I know you.  I know that would bug the crap out of you.”

John hated that she wasn’t wrong.

* * *

He researched; fact-finding was his default step one.

Usually his research notes weren’t on hardcore pornography, but it was the most easily available source of information, for all that even he knew it was a biased data point.

Physically, there was no problem.  He could apply sensation and get the appropriate response.  There was even an easy pleasure there, like after a good run.  He felt relaxed and grounded, and while he didn’t inexorably crave more, it didn’t bother him to try again.

He categorized his viewing by genre.  Anything with pain, anything where any participant was even playing unwilling, anything involving the application of force just made him feel uncomfortable and greasy, and it was a relief to be able to exclude that kind of material from his sample.  The gender of the participants seemed to make little difference–neither triggered much of a response at all.  The closest he got to feeling anything like what he’d heard described were the films where people were laughing, playing with their partners, tumbling and wrestling as much as copulating.

He dug further into that avenue of research, but surprisingly, his data was frustratingly scant.  Of what he could find, whether scenes with men and women, men and men, women and women all registered about the same; amusement, and a faint longing to feel.

There was nothing for it.

He’d have to conduct some more original research.

* * *

John didn’t want to hurt anyone, didn’t want them to expect more than he could offer.  He knew, for this to work, for him to trust the results, he needed full and informed consent.

Alice listened to him, a hint of a smile playing around the edge of her lips.  “That sounds…very rigorous.  You should put it up for peer review.”

John rolled his eyes.  “Please don’t mock.”

She finally laughed.  “Oh come on, I have to mock a little.  But go you,” she added immediately before the hurt could register.  “I think this will be good for you.  Taste every opportunity and all that.”

John licked his lips.  “Speaking of that.” He took a deep breath.  “How does a virgin fumble sound to you?”

Her smile softened.  “Oh honey,” she breathed, eyes wide and alight.  “Trust me, I’ll make it the best first time I can.”

“That’s a yes?” John double-checked.

“Yes, I will pop your cherry, with the full understanding that this is for science and your own belated but not too late journey of self-discovery,” she said,  enunciating each word as clearly as she could.  Standing up, she tugged her t-shirt off over her head.  “Now, if you’re still all in?” She balled her shirt in her hands as she waited for his nod of assent. “Good. Now get on the bed.”

She watched him with appreciative eyes as he shucked his own shirt before lying on the bed.  She crossed the room and straddled his hips.  “Also, house rules – no means no and stop means stop.  And you have the get out of jail free card if this is suddenly not to your liking.”  She pushed her hair back and smiled down at him.  “If you’re not enjoying it, tell me, okay?”

He nodded, letting his hands fall to rest on her thighs.  He could feel her muscles work as she leaned forward to bring them face to face.  “May I kiss you?”

John closed the gap, craning his neck to achieve only the barest brush of lips.  This time, now that he knew what to expect, it wasn’t as strange.

He let his head fall back on the pillow as Alice kissed his neck and continued to work her way down his body. “Should I…” he asked, lifting his hands slightly off her thighs.

She pressed them back down.  “Just hold on, cowboy,” she drawled.  “I’ll do the rest.”

She seemed pleased by his autonomous functioning, the receptiveness of nerve endings, but again, John wondered if he was meant to feel more than distant, clinical observation.  He was aware enough to know that most people probably weren’t thinking words like autonomous functioning at a time like this, for one.  He sucked in a deep breath through his nose and tried to concentrate on Alice.

She was moving to the music he couldn’t hear, her smile soft and real as she rolled her hips. He helped steady her as she rose up and slowly slid down onto him, her eyes rolling closed in her own pleasure.  “We good, John?” she all but purred, voice husky, as she bottomed out.

“Fine,” he said briskly, provoking her to open her eyes.

Her smile was sad.  “This isn’t doing much for you, is it?”

He shrugged, letting his hand brush up and down her thigh to feel the prickle of her leg hairs and the warmth of her skin.  “It’s not terrible, or awful or anything,” he admitted.  “I just thought I was supposed to feel…more….”

“Want to stop?”

He lifted one hand to brush her colourful fringe off her face.  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” he said, noting her slight blush, the downward dip of her eyes as she smiled.  “And that I do like.  So go on,” he waved his hand between them magnanimously.  “Have fun.”

She laughed, deep and loud, sending ripples down through where they were joined, and for a flash, John had shadow of an impression of why people were so crazy about sex.  “So kind, cupcake.”

John slid his hands onto her hips and gently coaxed her into moving.  “Mainly I just want to see what a woman’s orgasm actually looks like, and not the fake ones in pornography.  Pure scientific curiousity, I assure you,” he teased.

That got another laugh, a little snigger.  “You’re really okay?”  She eyed him closely as he nodded.  “Would you like to help?”  At his second nod, she took his right hand and guided it down.  “Do what I do, okay?”

Her clitoris was blood-warm, slick and slippery, and hard to the touch, which he hadn’t been expecting. But as John tried different pressures and motions, he discovered he could evoke different sounds, even jolt her out of her rhythm, and John found himself absorbed in experimenting.

Alice’s orgasm caught him slightly by surprise.

He caught her as she collapsed forward, and John was also startled by the warm flush he felt down to his toes as they pressed together.  “Okay?” she asked, breathless and smiling.

“All good,” he assured her, shifting them slightly so they were nestled together in the narrow bed.  He could feel the tacky stickiness drying on his fingers and instinctively sniffed them.  Frowning slightly, he tentatively gave his fingers a lick.

Alice half-laughed, half-groaned, and she covered her eyes with her free hand.  “Oh fuck, you’re going to be the death of me, John Tracy,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Tastes salty,” he said with a shrug, wiping his fingers on the sheets.

“That it does,” Alice agreed, settling in.  “Is this okay, hugging?”

John licked his lips, still tasting the hint of salt.  “Yeah, it’s…yeah.”

Alice seemed to understand what wasn’t being said.  She just burrowed in closer, resting her cheek on his chest.  John curled into her and felt their breathing slow and synch as through the window the light turned from day into night.

* * *

“So girls don’t gross you out, but they don’t rev your motor either,” Alice said as she sat down for dinner opposite him and immediately stole a handful of his fries.

“One is not exactly a rigorous sample,” John pointed out, pulling his fries out of her range.

She crunched on her stolen bounty as she studied him intently.  “If you want to expand your ‘sample,’” she said at last, sketching air quotes with greasy fingers.  “I know, like, at least seven girls who would all happily get naked with you for science.”  She started in on her own basket of fries.  “Especially if I tell them about those magic fingers of yours, whoo boy!”

John rolled his eyes at her exaggerated fanning, but he felt too languid and relaxed still to do much about it.  “I’ll take that under advisement,” he told her as she settled down again.  “Think I should give men a try?”

Alice’s eyes danced.  “I repeat,” she said leaning forward.  “I’m sure we can find some ready to make the sacrifice for science.”

John considered his options.  “Make it so, Number One,” he quipped.

She threw a fry at his head. “There is only the Force, asshat.  But apart from your dreadful taste in scifi, any preferences in men?”

John shrugged and picked at his burger.  “Clean-cut?” he hazarded.  “Not likely to get weird about the whole…me-ness of it.”

Alice made a face. “I’ll put you down for ‘a sense of humour’ then?”  she tapped her teeth thoughtfully.

John wiped his fingers clean on the thin paper napkin.  “Let’s start with that and go from there.”

* * *

John let Alice lead him by the hand, threading through the tight-pack weekend crowd towards the back of the room.  “Little H is totally cool, absolute sweetheart,” Alice was saying as she tugged him forward.  “And very cute.  Alas, he is also tragically fully homo, not a bi-bone in his body, so you will have to tell me all about it after so I can live vicariously through you.”

John let the words roll off him as he was pulled through room after room crammed full with people drinking and laughing.  She all but dragged him up the stairs, but at least the noise was less oppressive up here, and John started to vaguely recognize more faces.

Alice seemed to know where she was going, and so John didn’t really worry as she pushed him onto an overstuffed sofa in what looked like some kind of home theatre at the back of the house.  There were knots of people standing around, drinks in hand, but the music from below was just a distant thud-thud-thud of the bassline.  Alice had disappeared, but before he could decide whether or not to get up and look for her, she reappeared, towing a dark-haired figure in glasses.

“John, this is Hiram, that I was telling you about.  H, this,” she continued with a ringmasters flourish.  “Is John.”

Hiram pushed his glasses back up his nose.  “N-nice to meet you,” he said, a faint stutter softened with a small smile.  “Alice has given me an overview.”

John raised a pointed eyebrow at his friend.  “Has she now?”

Hiram had a nice smile.  “Shall we go somewhere more quiet to discuss it?”

* * *

He understood.  That made it so much easier when Hiram shyly suggested moving the conversation back to his apartment.  Hiram seemed to know the steps to the dance, and so John let himself be carried along as Hiram suggested the bedroom, suggested getting undress, suggested a gentle kiss to ease John in. “In the s-spirit of enquiry,” Hiram had teased, and John had laughed, honest and soft in the quiet, dark privacy of Hiram’s bedroom,  “Do you have any requests.”

John had shrugged.  “I’m an empiricist,” he admitted.  “Provide evidence, then deduce a conclusion.”

Hiram had taken his glasses off, and his eyes were large and slightly unfocused.  “Very well then,” he said softly, his Indian lilt almost melodic in whispers.  “A thorough examination.”

Alice had joked about John’s fingers, but Hiram seemed intent on touching every part of John with quick, gentle strokes.  It took a moment for John to relax, feeling oddly bare and on display, but Hiram was working with a kind of clinical observation that made it easier.  “How does this feel?” he asked, again and again.

“That feels pleasant.”

“Should I be feeling something?”

“That tickles.”

That had Hiram laughing softly, and John wondered if Hiram was feeling as oddly tense as he was.  “Let me try something?” John asked, rolling onto his side.  Alice had enjoyed doing this to him, and he was curious.

He stared on Hiram’s collarbone, tasting the faint salt of clean skin, before he moved slowly downwards.  Suckling on his nipple evoked a small yelp and a pleasurable sigh, and John focused on the moment, on the freckle at the top of Hiram’s navel, of the faint darker fuzz that led the way down.

“J-John, are you sure?”

John shrugged.  “I want to try everything.  I need to be sure.”

Hiram had locked eyes for a moment, then nodded.  “Here.”  Under his careful guidance, John ran his tongue along the thick vein under Hiram’s cock, evoking another long moan.  Remembering Alice’s quip about his fingers, he reached behind Hiram’s balls, and gently but firmly began to stroke.

Hiram caught his wrist on the third stroke.  “T-this will be over t-too soon if you keep that up,” he said with a gentle smile.  “My t-turn first.”

John stared at the ceiling as Hiram more confidently wrapped his lips around John’s cock.  The pressure and suction again felt good, but John knew he was meant to be feeling more.  Hiram pulled off with a pop.  “I t-think I’m enjoying t-this more than you are.”

John inhaled sharply through his nose.  “It’s not bad, and I certainly appreciate the company, but…”  He winced.  “Shouldn’t I be thinking more than just ‘this feels nice.’”

Hiram slithered up John’s body and rested against his ribs.  “Sometimes nice is enough,” he offered.  “B-but I t-think you want more.”

“Data is data,” he said.  John leaned in, pressing his forehead to Hiram’s as he reached down.  .  “And the least I can do is make sure you enjoy yourself.”

Hiram flailed a little as he came, a tiny choked off laugh from deep in his throat. That was a detail all the porn omitted, and John found a strange echo of pleasure in it even as he let his fingers take in the sensation of cum on his hand.  Instinctively, he lifted his hand to rub his thumb over his bottom lip, catching again that taste of salt.

“Why do people groan?” John asked, his hand still hovering near his mouth.  “A test should involve all senses.”

“Alice w-warned me you might be the death of me,” Hiram laughed as John let his tongue dart out to taste the cum splattered on his hand again.  “Verdict?”

John shrugged.  “Salty, but different to a woman’s.”

“Unsurprising.”  Hiram propped himself up on his elbow.  “C-can I taste you?”  Hiram blinked and shook his head.  “I mean, if you…”

“Orgasms feel nice to me too,” he cut in before Hiram could twist his own words into knots.  “But don’t put yourself out.”

Hiram’s hand was warm and strong where he planted it on John’s chest and pushed him back onto the mattress.  His mouth was even warmer.

* * * *

“You buy your own fries, why do you need mine?” John asked incredulously as Alice’s hand darted across the table of the dining hall before she’d even finished sitting down.

“Stolen fries taste better,” she said, unrepentant.  “H was looking happy in class this morning.  When did you get home?”

“This morning,” John said, unembarrassed.  “We had coffee before his class.”

She raised one eyebrow.  “Is that a good sign?”

John shrugged and dipped a fry in a smear of sauce.  “One and done, I think.  Though–data. And you’re right, he’s a good guy.”

Alice laughed.  “At least you friendzone people after a proper test run, I’ll give you that.  So,” she asked, eyes alight as she leaned forward.  “What now?”

* * * *

In terms of data collection, participant-observation was a reliable and trusted method.  And Alice’s friends Kara and Jin certainly seemed to enjoy being watched.

John guessed that taking notes might have been taking it a bit far.

His conclusions, shared over coffees the next morning with Hiram and Alice and Hiram’s friend Moffie, seemed to reinforce his original hypothesis.

“I’m missing something,” John said quietly, staring into the whorls of his coffee. “And since I’m the only common denominator, I’m the problem.”

Alice had pelted him with sugar packets at that.  “I’m banning that phrase from your vocabulary, sweetie,” she told him fondly.

“An argument c-could be made for insufficient evidence,” Hiram had added.

Later, while Hiram and Alice were bickering playfully over the bill at the counter, Moffie shyly slid a card, subdued black text on creamy white, listing only an address and a password, towards him with a meaningful look.

* * * *

The sex club was interesting, from an ethnographic perspective.

And in terms of design miniaturization and power-to-output ratios, some of the toys were fascinating.  He and Moffie ended up at an all-night diner, talking microcircuitry until dawn.

It was the most fun he’d had so far in terms of his data collection.

* * * * *

The staff at the local R-rated store tried to ease him into their outlet by saying they had heard of everything.

It turned out they hadn’t heard of sexual experimentation being conducted under conditions of scientific rigour, but they were game.

John wondered too late what his purchases would look like on his card statement.

* * * * *

John knew that any attempt to keep secrets would sooner or later fail, and so he just kept a low profile and hoped the general cultural bashfulness around talking about sex would keep the worst of the curious at bay.

Even so, he knew that his experiments were soon common knowledge by all in their small circle.  He was just sorry that Hiram and Alice had been singled out as critical sources and were being pestered for details.

“Just ask me,” he said in the end, exasperated by the latest sudden silence as he walked into the room.

After that, it was on.

* * * * *

“Have you tried…?”

“Yes,” John said, for what felt like the twentieth time.

“Damn, I wanted to try that with you. How about…”

John listened to the offer, ran it against the ever-growing mental checklist, and calmly closed his textbook.  “Your place or mine?”

* * * * *

Their first year was drawing to a close, and people who were once strangers were now more familiar to him than his own family.

“Okay everyone,” Jin called out, clapping her hands like an over-enthusiastic kindergarten teacher.  “Normal people incoming, everyone look boring.”

Kara tackled her girlfriend to the floor and tickled her until she was screetching.

John leaned over towards Moffie.  “I don’t think that counts as normal and boring,” he noted.

She beamed at him, eyes bright behind her glasses.  “Darling,” she said fondly as she folded her tablet shut.  “It’s going to be a stretch for all of us.”

* * * * *

“So, any hot prospects?” Gordon’s eyes weren’t on his brother, but one of the prospects walking slowly across the quad.

John stretched out his legs, feeling the faint ache in his muscles.  Jin and Kara’s tickle fight had soon engulfed all of them, and near most the people in the room knew him well enough to know that, while the sex part of the orgy he could take or leave, he did quietly enjoy the intimacy and the touch of a group he could trust just being with each other.  And so he’d stayed and let himself be dragged into touches and cuddles and the occasional orgasm.

Gordon probably didn’t want those details.  “No-one really,” he said honestly and turned the conversation back to Virgil’s looming enrollment and the current status of the various bets as to which college he would finally choose.

* * * * *

Hiram’s eyes nearly pushed out his glasses, he was staring so hard.  “Who is t-t-that?”

Even Moffie wolf-whistled.  John shrugged.  “My brother.  Virgil.”  He let Hiram’s conflict play out for a few long moments.  “Want an introduction?”

Hiram’s eyes lit up.  “Are you s-s-sure?  After…”

John patted his friend’s shoulder.  “He doesn’t need to know that detail.”  John had actually forgotten how they had become friends.  It felt so long ago now.  “Come on.”

* * * * *

John kept his findings in a blue notebook.  There was something grounding about the permanency of pen and paper.

“Traditionally, it should be black.”  John looked up, slightly startled, as Penelope Creighton-Ward dropped out of nowhere into the library chair opposite.

“Penny!  When did you…”

She smiled at him as she set her sleek little purse on the desk next to his bulging satchel.  “My father has business with your father, and I decided to tag along.”  She nodded at the book in his hands.  “And traditionally, it’s a little black book.”

John closed it, feeling the texture of the cover between his palms.  “It’s not…”

She raised one eyebrow.  “That’s not what I have heard,” she said with a knowing smile.  She leaned forward, her voice dropping conspiratorially.  “Word on the grapevine is that for a no-strings attached good time, you’re the man to call.”  She grinned like a Cheshire Cat, slow and lazy.  “Something about magic fingers.”

After a year, John was beyond blushing.  “Well, good to know they got something out of the experience.” He sounded bitterer than he intended.

Her expression softened.  “And you didn’t?”

John took a deep breath and explained.

At the end, Penny sat back, the prim and proper lady giving way to a loose kind of shock.  “John, honey,” she said sadly.  “You know there’s more to the world than heterosexual and homosexual, right?”

John tapped the cover of his notebook, now set on the table between them.  “Believe me,” he said firmly.  “I’ve tried them all.”

She sat forward.  “Has your research turned up asexuality?  Demisexuality?”  she trailed off as she studied John’s wide-open expression.  “Come on,” she said, her fingers warm on his risk.  “Back to the literature.”

* * * * *

John was too used to disappointment now to think it could be that easy.  “I’ve slept with friends.  Or made friends after we’ve slept together,” he said, sitting back from the thick psychological textbook to run his hands through his hair.

“And I envy you that ability,” Penny murmured, eyes scanning the page before her.

John sighed and studied her profile.  After everything he’d tried, he’d never thought of including Penny. He wondered why that was.  “Demisexuality is about deeply trusting the person before you can even start feeling those kinds of feelings,” he summarized.  “And the number of people I trust who I’m not related to….” he waited until she looked up before he held up two fingers in a crude but accurate measure of his life.

She frowned, a minute crease between her eyes.  “That would be myself and…?”

“Kayo,” he said, a fraction of a second before she got there herself.  “And she quite possibly would gut me with a knife if I tried that with her.”

That got him a soft laugh.  “You do seem to be having a year of living dangerously,” she pointed out.  Her own book closed with a muted snap.  “What do you want out of all of this, John Tracy?”  She waved a manicured hand over the mess of texts between them.  “Forget the labels, forget what everyone else is doing.  What do you want?”

John froze, caught blindside by the question.  “I…” he closed his eyes.  It was easier that way.  “I want to feel what everyone else feels.  I want to not feel so….”  He grimaced, hating how limiting the words were, unable to find any better.  “I want someone on my side,” he said at last, and even as he said it, he knew it was as close as he was going to get to what he needed to say.  “I just want someone there.”  He blinked, feeling a tiny bead of tears catching on his lashes, and he wiped them away angrily with the back of his hand.  

“And you think you need to sleep with someone to get them on your side?” she asked innocently.

John laughed, a little bitter, a little too honest.  “It’s certainly got me out to meet new people.  Isn’t that what Scott’s always on at me about?”  That sparked an unladylike laugh out of her, and John leaned in.  “I know what people used to say, still say about me.  I’m a bastard, I’m unapproachable and unlikeable and unlov-”

“Don’t,” Penny snapped, poking a finger in his face.  “Do not finish that sentence.”

“But what if I am, Pen?” he asked, letting himself feel the pain behind the words.  He tapped the pile of closed books between them.  “Normal people don’t have to design a methodology to be intimate with others.  Normal people feel things in reasonable ways.  Normal people don’t have to….” he snapped his jaw shut hard enough that his teeth ached.

“Don’t have to what, darling?” Penny pressed, gently.

John sat back and shook his head, unable to meet her eyes.  “Nothing.  Nevermind.  Experiment over, hypothesis proved.”

“You think you’re alone?” There was an edge to her words that he wasn’t sure about, and he finally lifted his head to look at her.  Her eyes were hard-edged like diamonds.  “You’re not alone John.”

He reached for his bag.  “I’ll try to remember that,” he said, not even bothering to pretend he meant it.  “Later, Penny.”

Her hand snapped out, and her grip was unbreakable.  John stared at her fingers wrapped around his wrist.  “One more question,” she asked, tugging him towards her.  “Then you can go.”  John sighed but turned to face her.  “Why did you keep going?  A whole year, with everything else going on?  You’re busy, and you’ve never been one to be frivolous with your time.  So just tell me why you kept at your little experiment so long, if it was all so distasteful?”

“It wasn’t distasteful, I just didn’t….feel,” he shrugged.  “But…”  Penny was his oldest friend.  He could trust her not to abuse the truth.  “After it was over.  I enjoyed that, I think.  Or something close enough to pass.”

She frowned again.  “You liked that it was over?” she asked incredulously.

John nodded.  “And we were alone, but together, and we were close.”  He chuckled, thinking of Alice and Hiram and Moffie, of Kate and Jin and so many others now.  “Believe it or not, but some of the best conversations I ever had were in the afterglow.”

Penny’s expression was shifting from incredulous to something much sadder than John didn’t want to see.  Tugging his hand free, he turned and strode for the exits.

* * * * *

It was late, the building quiet, by the time John returned to his rooms.  He’d not meant to be out so long, but he didn’t want to run the risk of running into any of the others when his eyes were still red.

He froze in the doorway, exasperated and suddenly unsurprised, by the sight of Penny, in one of his old sweatshirts, curled up on the couch waiting for him.  Shaking his head, he closed the door and went through the routine of shrugging off his coat and hanging up his bag.  “What do you want, Pen?” he asked.

She patted the cushion next to her.  “Come, sit.  They’re running an Astaire marathon.”  Glancing at the screen, John caught sight of dancing feet in glorious technocolor.

“I’m tired, Pen.  Do we…”

“Yes.”  Penny sat up onto her knees.  “Believe it or not, John Tracy, but I’m on your side, and I am worried about you.”

John rubbed his tired eyes.  “Forget I said anything.  Forget whatever it is you heard.  I’m stopping.  It’s stupid, and it’s not working, and the sooner I accept that the problem is and always will be me, the better it will be for everyone.”

“Bullshit.”

John blinked; he could count on one hand the number of times he’d ever heard Penelope swear.  “Penny.”

She ran right over him.  “I was thinking about what you said, about sex, and about after, and about being alone.  And I think the issue is that everyone else combines intimacy into one great big…well, big lump.  And you need, you crave, a more carefully refined form.  So come, sit, and let me try and experiment for once.”

Mutely, John stepped around and carefully sat down.  She tugged at him, arranging bodies until they were tangled together, his head pillowed on her ribs so that he could hear every beat of her heart.  “Okay?” she asked.

“Okay,” John murmured, barely more than a whisper.  A part of him was resisting, but another part wanted to melt against her in a boneless heap.

She stroked his hair, down the nape of his neck.  “Good.  Now watch movies with me.”

When John woke up, he was tucked up on the couch, a blanket draped over him.  And he was alone.   In that moment, the pain came so hard and so fast that John had to admit that maybe Penny was onto something.

There was a note on the table, the name of a cafe off campus and a time twenty minutes in the future.  She’d signed her initials in a heart, and a little of the loneliness ebbed away.

John found his shoes and headed out to make their date.


End file.
